Early astronomers realized some of the “stars” in the sky were planets in our Solar System, and really, only then did we realize Earth is a planet too. Now, we’re finding planets around other stars, and thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope, we’re able to find planets that are even smaller than Earth.

Jupiter and the Full Snow Moon Come Together In a Beautiful Conjunction Tonight

The Full Moon celebrates Jupiter’s coming opposition by accompanying the bright planet in a beautiful conjunction tonight.

Even last night Jupiter and the Moon were close enough to attract attention. Tonight they’ll be even more striking. Two reasons for that. The Moon is full this evening and will have crept within 4½° of the planet. They’ll rise together and roll together all night long.

Where do comet tails come from? Although it is common knowledge that comet tails and comas originate from comet nuclei, exactly how that happens is an active topic of research. One of the best images yet of emerging jets is shown in the featured image, taken last November by the robotic Rosetta spacecraft in orbit around the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (Comet CG), and released last month. The overexposed picture shows plumes of gas and dust escaping numerous places from the Comet CG's nucleus as it nears the Sun and heats up. Although Comet CG is currently further out from the Sun than Mars, its orbit will take it almost as close as the Earth this coming August, at which time its jet activity is expected to increase by a factor of about 100. You've likely seen some debris from comet nuclei before but in another form -- when sand-sized bits end their journey through the Solar System by impacting the atmosphere of Earth as meteors.﻿

MOAR rockets! As a followup to our recent post about the Rockets of the World (to scale), here’s another graphic posted on imgur, created by Alex Brown. While the earlier graphic only included rockets that had flown, this one has rockets that are also in development, such as the SLS, Falcon Heavy and the Long March 9.